Visions of the Descended
by BerryCollector
Summary: Alice Cullen has had visions for as long as she can remember. But her most recent visions are different from her others, and she can’t figure out how. Exactly whose future is she seeing and why is the girl from these visions so intriguing?
1. Chapter One

**Chapter One  
Alice**

**Disclaimer: This will be the disclaimer for the entire story. I do not own Twilight or any of its characters. Kthnx.**

"Bella, come _on_! We're going to miss the sale!"

I was tapping my foot impatiently, waiting for Bella and Renesmee to get out of my Porsche. Bella was stalling, as she always did when I decided to take her shopping. Her resentment towards shopping malls and buying clothes hadn't changed at all now that she was immortal, I noted bitterly. I'd run right up to the front door of the mall as soon as I'd parked my car, but Bella had said that her purse looked ripped or something (I'd been trying to tune out the complaining so I didn't quite catch her excuse) and told me she'd catch up.

I glanced at my watch. Five minutes. How could it possibly take anyone _five minutes _to see if their purse was ripped?!

"I'm coming, I'm coming." Bella said quietly as she opened the door and helped Renesmee out. Nessie was only a year old, but already she looked like a tall second grader. It was so hard to keep up with her constant growth spurts, not to mention having to take her shopping whenever she grew out of her clothes, which was pretty often. Not that I minded the bonding time with my niece. She'd always been a more cooperative shopper than Bella, and she was less whiney about it, too. That always made me happy. Maybe she'd turn into a shopaholic like me someday. One could only hope.

Bella purposely took her time as she crossed the few feet between the parking spot and the mall entrance, walking at a pace that was slow even for humans. I scowled at her when she finally reached the front of the mall.

"You know, Bella, you're awfully _slow_ for a vampire." I said quietly, so only she and Nessie could hear me. Nessie giggled and Bella's annoyed look never left her face.

"Let's get this over with." She said melodramatically as she held the door open for Nessie and me. I rolled my eyes at her and grinned.

"You'll find something you'll like. Trust me." I took Nessie's hand as we got inside. I caught the look on Bella's face for just a moment, and I was glad that she didn't look incredibly doubtful. But who would doubt anything _I_ said?

"Momma." Nessie's little soprano voice interrupted the slightly awkward silence. "Can I shop for clothes first?"

"Of course you can, sweetie," Bella answered and smiled down at Nessie. I scowled at her again. She was still trying to stall.

"Okay. Nessie can shop first. But, Bella, don't think you're going to get out of it," I said menacingly. "Even if we miss the sale, you're still going to shop. You'll just have to pay full price."

Bella grimaced. "Wonderful," she said sarcastically as Nessie dragged her to the children's section. I tagged along behind them and began to search for some cute outfits that Nessie would like.

"Nessie, how about this one?" I called as I held up a dress for her to examine. It was patterned with gray plaids and had a thin black belt attached to the waist. It was, to say the least, an adorable dress that I was sure Nessie would look great in.

Nessie inspected the dress carefully, playing with both the skirt and the belt and measuring the straps. "No thanks," she finally answered.

I raised my eyebrows. "No thanks?" I repeated. "This dress is so cute, though! You'd look absolutely adorable in it! Just try it on real quick and – are you even listening, Nessie?!" I noticed that my niece had strolled off to look at another outfit sometime in the middle of my rant.

"Momma?" She beckoned Bella over and held out something for her to see. "Can I get this?"

Bella's eyes just about popped out of her head as she saw the miniskirt that Nessie had in her hands. It was a "shouldn't-be-in-the-children's-section-because-it's-far-too-skimpy" kind of miniskirt. I tried to stifle my laughter but failed miserably.

"Um…" Bella stammered as she reached out to take the miniskirt away from Nessie. "Let's, um… keep looking."

Nessie pouted. "Fine," she said reluctantly and skipped off to another rack of clothes. Bella sighed and followed her.

"Will you help me look for some _appropriate _clothes for my daughter, Alice?"

"Sure, why not?" I replied as I dragged my fingers along various types of clothes, feeling their different textures and trying to judge them by that. "How about this one?" I asked as I pulled out a pink V-neck sweater from the rack.

Bella groaned. "I should've known. You're just as bad as Nessie."

"What?!" I looked over the sweater carefully but still couldn't see anything wrong with it. Bella ignored my searching and went over to Nessie, whose arms were already filled with different clothes that she'd chosen. "But… Bella!" I whined, trying to get her attention. "This sweater is so cute! Look at the little puff balls on the strings! Look at them!" I waved the sweater at Bella, but my attempt to make her listen to me was futile. Other people seemed to be listening to me, though, and I earned quite a few stares from passersby as I went to put the sweater back.

"Alice?" Bella called from her station by the dressing room door. I sniffed and didn't respond. Bella rolled her eyes. "Ugh, fine. I guess I'll have to hold all these clothes myself," she complained and headed into the dressing room after Nessie.

It happened very suddenly then.

I gasped when my eyesight abruptly started to grow cloudy and the room I was in gradually begun to fade away. I frowned and leaned against the wall, knowing what was coming.

Bella and Nessie were just coming back from the dressing rooms when it happened.

"Alice!" Bella's voice had hardly registered in my mind as I watched the scene playing out in front of me.

_The girl ran through the forest, not paying attention. She tripped over her feet and fell into a tree. Huffing, she felt her way around the trunk and pressed her back against it. Laughter echoed through the forest as she did so._

_"Oh, you like to play, don't you?" The voice was deep – male – and was all too familiar. It and made the girl freeze in terror. The hairs on her neck rose as the pursuer spoke his next words. "That's excellent, because I love a good game of hide-and-seek."_

_The girl whimpered silently as she clung to the tree trunk. A breeze blew her hair back and there was a sort of sniffing sound coming from the other side of the tree. She stiffened and her eyes were wide._

_"Please… leave me alone," she said softly. "I-I have money. I'll give you all my money. Just please don't hurt me."_

_There was a pause, and then a bloodcurdling laugh that wasn't loud enough to echo through the forest but was powerful enough to paralyze the girl further. "Believe me, you won't feel a thing." Pale hands suddenly gripping the girl's shoulders. Gasping and trying to break free. Being pulled under. Biting. Thrashing. Blurs of motion. Fading._

I gasped again and my eyes opened wide. I slowly took in the scenery of the present: Bella standing in front of me, looking frantic. Nessie holding my hand, looking up at me with her big eyes. People staring. I heard faint mutterings of "is she about to have a seizure?" and "maybe we should call security".

"Alice." Bella grabbed me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes. "We have to leave."

I didn't say anything. I stared at Bella's golden eyes and shook my head. "But the sale… we'll miss the sale."

"Forget the sale, we're going home." Bella grabbed my hand and forced me to follow her. "Come on, Nessie. Everyone else, don't worry," she added to the crowd of people that had formed around us. "My sister just needs to lie down. Let us through." She muttered a few more things along the lines of "Come on, come on, get out of the way," but all these words were scattered across the air that they were dispersed into.

"Tell me what you saw when we get in the car," Bella instructed when we were away from all the humans. I nodded feebly, already playing back the vision in my mind. A vampire. A girl. A girl about to be killed by a vampire.

Why did I care so much that this girl was going to be killed? It wasn't like I wanted people to be killed… but I had no idea where this girl was or even when she was going to die. There was no way I could save her. But why did this fact upset me so badly? And why did I suddenly want to see her again? I tried to remember all of her features. Thick hair, blue eyes… Her eyes. What was it about her eyes that was so intriguing…?

Her eyes were diverse, yet familiar in a way that I couldn't describe. There was something about this girl that I couldn't figure out. It was as if I… knew her or something. Could I have known her before I became a vampire…?

No. That couldn't be possible. She couldn't have been more than twenty… She couldn't have been _alive_ back then. But if I didn't know her… why did she seem to trigger some sort of memory inside me?

**A/N: Wow. Writing a vision of Alice's was harder than I thought it would be. I hope it was good and realistic enough.**

**Anyone want to take a guess at who the girl from Alice's vision is? Anyone? Well, you won't have to wonder for too long. I'm actually having a lot of fun writing this story, and having fun writing = chapters posted quicker. Yay!**

**Review please. Constructive criticism is welcome.**

**--Becky**


	2. Chapter Two

**(I've decided to just put a disclaimer before every chapter, just in case.)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or any of its characters. Natalie, however, is mine :)**

**Chapter Two  
Natalie**

I grabbed my messenger bag and slung it over my shoulder after checking my makeup one more time. I grabbed my cell phone from the dresser and shoved it into my bag that had already been filled to the max with books, pens, and my laptop.

I threw open my bedroom door, slamming it behind me. I was already half-way down the stairs when I realized I hadn't bothered to put my hair back. I hesitated and glanced at my closed door. If I went back into my room, Mom would probably decide to go give me another lecture… and then I'd be totally screwed because I'd be late for school. I shook my head and ran down the rest of the stairs, pushing my wild hair out of my face.

"I'll be back later tonight, Mom," I called as I opened the front door. "Don't worry about dinner. Danielle's parents invited me to eat with them." I didn't even wait for her response, but I knew it would have been something like _We're going to talk when you get home, you know._ Hopefully I could get out of that, too.

_Divorce._ The word rang repeatedly in my head. How could this happen? Even though my parents used to fight a lot when I was a kid, I hadn't heard them fight for months. They'd been to marriage counseling. They'd been to family counseling. They'd been to just about every flipping counseling that was offered in this town and they still couldn't work out their problems.

_They never did apologize for making me listen to all the yelling when I was little..._ I was getting even more pissed off at little things that didn't technically have anything to do with the current situation. That was always what happened when I got angry. Somehow my memory would conjure up everything that had made me angry over the past years, every feeling that I had kept bottled up inside, and the horrible memories and the pain that came with them would crash down on me like a tidal wave. It always happened, even when I told myself it wouldn't.

_Stop it,_ I mentally scolded myself, as I often did when I was annoyed. _Don't let your mind go off to anything else. Focus on what's pissing you off now, not what made you angry when you were nine. ... I sound like a therapist._

Okay, so the current situation… my parents were getting divorced. Divo_rced. _They wouldn't be together anymore. Ever, most likely. I could understand something temporary… maybe Dad would move out for a few months, and then move back in and he and Mom would be happy again. I could understand that… but a divorce?

_It's probably my fault,_ I thought to myself. I'm never really around anymore. _We never do anything together. Never. Because I'm not around. Talk about a pathetic daughter._ I sighed as I opened my car door. _Dad just doesn't want to deal with me anymore._

I threw my messenger bag into the car and was just about to step into it when I stopped, an idea forming in my head. I glanced at my watch. Classes wouldn't start for another hour, and my school was only a fifteen-minute-long car ride away. I hadn't realized, what with Mom's lecture and my flurry of emotion, that I had been leaving home way too early.

I leaned into my car and grabbed my bag again, searching for my iPod in the side compartment. Once I found it and put my earbuds in I slammed the door and locked the car and took off at a jog down the road.

Running had always calmed me down when I was mad, ever since I was younger. Whenever I was angry I would take a jog for an hour or two, and then come back home feeling better and finding that Mom and Dad had made up, which put me in an even better mood…

_No. Don't think about that now. Don't think about any of that._

I started playing Caramelldansen, the stupid little song that always managed to cheer me up. As the techno melody and Swedish lyrics reached my ears I put everything else out of my mind and concentrated on the music.

~*~

I lost track of time when I arrived at school, so I checked my watch. It had taken about a half hour to get here. Panting, I ran up the steps to the double doors and pulled one open. I ran up to the door to my first class, even though I was positive I wouldn't be late. Class wouldn't start for at least fifteen minutes. I yanked open the door and went inside, breathing in the smell of fresh chalk as I did so.

I spotted Danielle, one of my friends, sitting in her usual seat. I went up to mine, which was next to hers.

"Hey," I greeted Danielle as I laid my bag on the floor and sat down.

"Hello," she said, not looking up from her graphic novel. I picked up the cover with my finger to see what she was reading.

"_Fruits Basket_ again?" I shook my head and leaned back in my seat. "What is your obsession with that series?"

"It's interesting," she mumbled as she skipped ahead a few pages. "Hah. I knew it." I rolled my eyes and she closed her book and stuck it into her backpack.

"Hey, do you have a rubber band or something I could borrow?" I was trying to comb through my hair with my fingers, hoping I could at least make it stop falling into my eyes, but it wasn't exactly working.

"Um…" I heard Danielle search through her bag. "Yay, found it," she said, holding up a dark, overused rubber band as evidence. I took it from her and began to tie my hair back with it.

"No! What are you doing?!" Danielle asked.

"…Putting my hair back?" I finished with my hair and flipped my ponytail over my shoulder.

"No!" Danielle repeated. "Don't use that!" She lunged for my hair and swiftly pulled out the rubber band, thus ruining my ponytail.

"What the hell–? I need that, give it back!" I told her, but she was already stuffing the rubber band back into her pack.

"You can't use a rubber band!" she scolded me. "It's bad for your hair!"

"It's convenient," I retorted. "I'll get something better when I get home. Besides, my hair isn't going to get much worse anyway."

Danielle huffed. "A rubber band, honestly. And to think I let you do my makeovers. Here," she said, stuffing a headband into my face. "Use this, please." It was then that I noticed she was covering her eyes with her arm like she was afraid to see what I'd do with the headband.

I took the headband from her and examined it. It was black and spotted with white. I decided it wasn't that bad so I put it in my hair.

"Hey, guys," Nikki, our other friend, greeted us. She sat down at the desk to my left. "What's up?"

"Natalie's been neglecting her hair again," Danielle said haughtily. "She actually tried to use a rubber band to put it back! Can you believe it, Nikki?"

Nikki fake-gasped. "Oh, gosh, no. I can't believe that, Danielle. Why would you do something so horrible?!" she added to me and slammed her fist on the desk. "Haven't we told you multiple times not to do that?"

I sighed and leaned back in my chair, fiddling with the headband. "Yeah, well… shut up," I said when I couldn't come up with a good enough comeback. Nikki chuckled quietly and opened her notebook.

"What are we working on today?" she asked as she flipped through pages.

"Um, _Pride and Prejudice,_ I think." I opened my own notebook to confirm this. "Yeah, we were supposed to have read three chapters for this morning."

"Aw, crap," Nikki moaned. "I thought we had to do that by tomorrow. I only read one chapter."

"And I've been reading manga," Danielle said. "Which reminds me, you guys have got to check out this new series that I found."

"I don't read manga," I said, rolling my eyes. "And am I the only one who actually does the homework?"

"Yes," Nikki and Danielle said simultaneously.

"By the way, what's that series called?" Nikki asked Danielle, and then they spent the next ten minutes discussing manga and Japanese culture and using hard-to-pronounce character names. I tried to tune this out, along with the rest of the chatter going on in the room, as I cracked open _Pride and Prejudice_ and started on the next chapter. I was still reading when our English teacher came into the room and scolded everyone for their "incessant chatter". And thus, the school day began.

~*~

When Danielle, Nikki and I went to sit at our usual lunch table, we found that the rest of our cafeteria friends were already there, and, not surprisingly, they were arguing.

"It was not after Christmas!" Lacey was saying, jabbing her fork at Shawn to emphasize her words.

"It was actually a couple weeks after Christmas," Shawn answered calmly. "After we came back from break."

"What are you guys talking about?" Nikki asked as we sat down in our usual seats. I crossed my legs and started to tear apart my bread, trying to satisfy my restless fingers.

"That uber-cheesy play that we did last year," Lacey explained. "The play that was held approximately a week before Christmas."

"After Christmas," Shawn mumbled.

"I can't side with anyone on this," Matthew added. "I've been trying to block that horrid excuse for a play out of my mind."

"So you guys are all wondering whether the play was before or after Christmas," Danielle verified as she opened her pudding cup. "You know what to do, Natalie."

Everyone looked toward me expectantly and I rolled my eyes. "Fine, fine. Okay, that play last year, the weird one. Ooh, was that the one where Michelle almost fell off the stage?" Nods of affirmation from the crowd. "That's what I thought. I sat next to Danielle and Lacey during that one. Lacey was wearing that cute little white dress with the ballet flats. I loved that outfit, by the way. Nikki was complaining about breaking her cell phone. Shawn was being an idiot, as usual. Danielle was talking my ear off about her _upcoming Christmas plans._ Also, I just remembered, Lacey was wearing mistletoe earrings. Why would anyone wear mistletoe earrings after Christmas?" I heard a little "yes!" from Lacey and a "damn!" from Shawn and smiled. "So Lacey's correct, the play was held before Christmas."

"Told you!" Lacey said smugly, sticking her tongue out at Shawn. "Once again, Natalie's freakishly good memory turns the odds in my favor and confirms that I am more intellectually gifted than you."

"Being more intellectually gifted than Shawn isn't exactly a feat," Nikki deadpanned.

Shawn punched her in the shoulder playfully. "I could say the same about you, Miss Failing-Math-Because-Of-An-Internet-Obsession."

Nikki made a humphing noise before she started ripping her food apart. She had a bad habit of tearing things to shreds when she became annoyed, which is why Shawn and I scooted our chairs away from her slightly.

"So anyway," Danielle started, shooting a brief, anxious glance at Nikki, "my b-day is on Friday. Just four more days!"

"Oh, really?" Lacey was playing cap-ball with Matthew – a stupid game where they flicked a bottle cap back and forth at each other – but looked up when Danielle spoke. "We didn't realize that you've been telling us for the past few weeks."

"Past few months is more like it," Matthew said under his breath before Lacey flicked the bottle cap at him. He just barely caught it with his index finger and pushed it back to her. "How old are you going to be anyway? Like, fifteen?"

_"Seventeen!"_ Danielle hollered at him. "Seventeen! Where the hell did you get fifteen?!"

"I don't know," Matthew responded brilliantly, missing the oncoming bottle cap and cursing under his breath. It rolled past him and under a table behind us, which was filled with football jocks.

Danielle rolled her eyes at him. "Anyway," she started, "do you guys know what I would love more than anything for my birthday?"

"A BMW?" Shawn guessed, eyeing Nikki's occupied hands and the pizza that they were tearing.

"Well, yes. But no. That's not what I was going to say." She twisted the cap off her lemonade and laid it down in front of her. Matthew quickly snatched it up. She stared at him with her mouth hung open. "W-T-F was_ that_ about?"

"I'm not asking those jocks to give me back that other bottle cap," he said as he flicked his new bottle cap at Lacey. "And I am _not_ losing this game."

There was a slight pause, and then everyone said "I just lost the game" at once.

"Weren't we on the topic of birthdays…?" I prompted Danielle. Sometimes our group could get so distracted it wasn't even funny.

"Yeah." Danielle smiled widely. "Okay, well, I was thinking that we could go camping after my birthday party!"

This statement was met with loud groans of disapproval, mostly from Nikki, who wasn't exactly an outdoors-y person.

"Oh, come on, guys!" Danielle complained. "It would mean a lot to me!"

"I'm not going to be stuck in a tent with Nikki," Lacey said. "All she'll do is complain about her lack of cell phone reception."

"And seeing as I'm a guy," Matthew added, "I don't think I'm allowed to come."

"Well…" Danielle pondered. "Probably not. Actually, my mom would probably kill me for that."

"Shawn could come, though," Nikki said when she was finished tearing her food. "'Cause he's already as close to a girl as any guy could be."

"Ooh, burn," Lacey said.

"Nikki, cut it out." I rolled my eyes. "Shawn probably doesn't like to be picked on for his feminine qualities." Shawn started to say something, but I cut him off. "We're on the topic of birthdays. Well, camping now. But we're not discussing anyone's femininity here!" I turned to Danielle. "I'll go camping with you. It'll give me an excuse to get out of the house." _And away from my problems,_ I added mentally.

"Yay!" Danielle hugged me with one arm. "Thank you, Natalie! Now, why can't any of you be as good a friend as Natalie?" she asked, pouting.

"Ugh," Nikki groaned. "I guess I have to go now."

Everyone stared at Lacey, waiting for her response.

"I would go, and complain about doing so, if I didn't have to spend 'quality time' with my family, which should mostly consist of me and my sister picking on each other," she said. "I'm sorry, Danielle."

"It's fine," she mumbled, then perked up slightly. "At least two of my buddies can come." She clapped her hands together, looking utterly thrilled that she would be spending all night around a campfire with me and a girl who couldn't keep her hands off of electronics. Sometimes I admired her enthusiasm. But most of the time it just got annoying.

"We'll have fun," I promised her, trying to ignore Matthew's cursing and holler of "she hit me in the frickin' _eye_ with that thing!"

I laughed quietly. Maybe it wasn't so bad that my family would be separated soon.

I'd always have _this _quirky, upbeat family.

**A/N: Today was a good writing day for me, so I also completed chapter three! I'll be posting it (hopefully) by the end of the weekend, after I go through it and do some editing.**

**I'm sorry that this chapter was made up entirely of OCs, but I felt like I had to switch points of view. I'm sorry if I confused you with anything, but you can probably guess whose point of view this chapter is from. And if you can't, just PM me and I'll tell you!**

**--Becky**


	3. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or any of its characters.**

**Chapter Three  
****Alice**

"Well," Bella started, breaking the three-minute-long silence that had befallen us since leaving the mall, "we can never shop _there_ again."

I nodded, staring out the window, hardly paying attention to the road, which would have been bad if I wasn't a vampire. "It's too bad some employees were watching us," I said, thinking of the bystanders who had been giving us suspicious looks. "I liked that place."

Bella sniffed but didn't respond. I noticed her biting her lip and twirling her hair – a new habit she'd developed after becoming immortal – and sighed, making my way into a nearly-deserted parking lot. I killed the engine as soon as I'd pulled into a random space. Bella turned around and frowned at me.

"This doesn't look like home," she said.

"I wanted to talk to you about what you'd seen, and I don't really… feel like driving while I do," I told her.

Bella lifted one eyebrow at me. "You don't feel like driving and talking at the same time? Since when can vampires not multi-task?"

I smiled absently and looked back out the window and towards an empty shop, fixing my eyes on a sign that read "out to lunch – be back soon!"

"It's not so much that," I said. "I'm just a little… shaken up over the vision." I frowned and stared at my hands. "It's odd; I've never felt this way after a vision before."

Bella paused for a moment, and then turned around towards the back seats. "Nessie?" she said softly. "You haven't said a thing since the mall. Are you okay?"

"Yes," Nessie answered curtly, not sounding very okay. "Is _Aunt Alice_ okay, Momma?"

"She'll be fine," Bella responded immediately, but I wasn't so sure if what she was saying was true. She turned back to me expectantly. "Right, Alice?"

"Right," I lied smoothly, knowing Nessie would believe me. "I'm fine. I mean, I will be fine. It's just…" I trailed off and sunk back into my seat.

Bella took a deep breath and crossed her legs, making herself comfortable. "What did you see?" she prompted.

"I saw…" I frowned deeper, staring off into space. "This girl, with dark hair and blue eyes and… she was killed by a vampire. Correction, she will be killed by a vampire."

Bella shot me a look as if to say d_o not put images into my innocent daughter's head._

"Have you ever seen the girl before?" she asked.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "Never. I didn't recognize her at all. But something about her was so familiar… like I knew her or something. And I don't understand it."

Now Bella was frowning too. "This is unusual, isn't it? For you to see a stranger and feel like you know them?"

"I think it's pretty unusual to feel like you know someone you've never seen before, Bella," I huffed.

My visions had never been like this before. If I'd seen someone I didn't know I wouldn't usually feel anything for them at all. Unless they were proposing a threat or something, like the nomads had back when Bella was still human. Because it _mattered_ that I would see them and know what they were up to. Did it matter that I felt something about this girl, too?

Bella stopped twirling her hair and started brushing her fingers against the windowpane. "Alice, I don't really know what to tell you… but maybe… this girl is important?" she offered. "Maybe she's significant to your life or something? I don't know."

I leaned my head against the back of the seat, spotting various shadow-patterns on the ceiling but not giving them much thought. "This is odd. And I don't know what to do about it, but I have to do something."

"You said she met a vampire, right?" Bella asked, clearly not wanting to say "killed" for fear of upsetting Nessie. I nodded once in response. "What did the vampire look like? Was it someone we know? One of the Volturi?" she guessed, eyes wide. "Did the girl know the vampire secret or something?"

I threw my hands up in the air. "Bella, I _do not know_ if the girl knows the vampire secret or something! Have you been following?" I sighed when she looked down at her hands apologetically and started over, speaking in a calmer and softer tone. "No, I've never seen the vampire before. But for all I know, he could've been some wild newborn. Actually, that sounds like a good conclusion to come to: he was a wild newborn killing a random."

Bella glared at me again for saying "kill". I rolled my eyes and started the car.

"Let's just go home, and I'll tell everyone else about my vision, and they'll say it's nothing to be worried about and that we should just get on with our lives, and then we'll be a big happy family again and find a new mall where we can shop."

I pulled out of the parking space and made my way out of the parking lot. Bella didn't respond, but she didn't need to. I knew she thought I was wrong.

~*~

"We're home," Bella called when we entered the house. I sighed. She already knew that everyone would know we were home as soon as we pulled into the driveway, but her human habits still hadn't broken yet.

"Hey," Rosalie said, appearing at the base of the stairs. "I don't see shopping bags. Don't tell me Alice failed you, Nessie."

Nessie shrugged and hung up her jacket. "We didn't really get to shop," she told Rosalie. "I'm hungry," she added, this time to Bella.

"I'll take you hunting if you want." Bella hung up her own jacket, which was mainly a prop she used when it was cold enough for humans to need them. "You want me to call Jacob? Maybe he can come with us."

Nessie's face brightened at this. "Okay. But I'm not letting him win this time."

Bella laughed and went to get the phone, shooting me a_ tell them_ look as she did so. Nessie tagged along with her, leaving me alone with Rosalie.

"Alice?" Rosalie frowned. "You look a little… well, not happy and perky and, you know… annoying."

I sniffed, dropping my purse by the doorway. "I'm just feeling a little… off, I guess. Where's Jasper?" I added, in hopes that he would make me feel better.

"He went out with Edward. Hunting, I presume."

Great. The only two vampires who would know how I was feeling weren't even here to help me explain it. "Hunting again?" I said absently, fiddling with one of my belt loops.

Rosalie hesitated for a moment. "Yes," she said slowly. "They haven't been hunting for a few weeks."

"Oh," I said. "Right. I guess I forgot."

_"Forgot?"_ Rosalie stared at me. "You don't just_ forget_ things. What's going on, Alice?"

"Nothing," I said finally, looking her square in the eye. "I'm just a little irritated at not shopping, that's all."

"Oh, really?" Rosalie said, crossing her arms, her lips forming into a tight line. "And why didn't you shop?"

"Because Nessie was getting hungry. For blood, not food," I added when Rosalie opened her mouth to say something else. "We didn't take her to a restaurant because she wanted blood. But don't worry, we're going shopping again tomorrow," I lied smoothly. Anyone else, vampire or otherwise, would have believed this lie, but I'd had a feeling from the start that Rosalie wouldn't. But I had to try.

"Alice, I've known you long enough to tell when you're lying." She stepped off the bottom of the stairs and crossed over to me gracefully. "Let's try the truth now. Why are you so unusually distracted and why weren't you able to shop?"

"Fine," I mumbled, rolling my eyes. "I didn't really want to tell you this because I didn't want you to worry. I had a vision while I was out." I watched as she raised her eyebrow. "Yeah, a vision. That's _all,_ really," I insisted. "There were employees watching as I spaced out and Bella thought it would be best if we left." Rosalie was just about to respond when Bella and Nessie came back into the hall.

"Hey, Nessie and I are going to go hunting in a couple minutes. Jacob's coming too, so I doubt Rosalie would want to come. But, Alice, are you thirsty?" She helped Nessie with her jacket and turned to me.

I hesitated. Rosalie looked a little annoyed that I wasn't offering her all of the details of my vision, but I really, really didn't want her to worry. Maybe when Jasper and Edward came home they could help me explain things.

"Sure, I'll go," I said to Bella. I shot a glance at Rosalie. She hadn't moved an inch. "I'll talk to you later, Rose. Promise." I then opened the door and swept out of the house, happy to be away from Rosalie's perturbed gaze and out in the cool, crisp air.

**A/N: Sorry about how short that chapter was. I didn't really know how to make it longer, and I wanted to end it in the place that I did. I don't think this is one of my best chapters, but I've been trying to update quicker (my beta reader has been prompting me to do so…) so I hope this chapter was good enough!**

**Once again, please review. :)**

**--Becky**


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